Charisma, Betrayal and Fidelity

This is the text of a sermon that I gave at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Corvallis on January 15, 2005. Please do not quote text without credit and letting me know. Thanks!

Chapter 1. Who are we?

This is a difficult topic. A friend sent an email last week, she said “I’m looking forward to your sermon. Sounds intriguing, and a bit scary.” And I find it bit scary too. But here I am, because the topic is important to me and because, for some strange reason, I like facing scary stuff.

I think sex is important. Sex is sacred, spiritual and powerful. Sex has been twisted by our society into a commodity; it has been glorified and demonized. While I may claim to ‘not participate in popular culture’ I do read the headlines of the US, People, and all those magazines at the grocery check out line. From that small sample of popular culture, it appears that sex is important to many more people than just me.

I also want you to know that I intend to speak here as much as possible from my personal experience. I resisted the urge to quote numerous sources. I do not want to rest my case on a scientific study. I want to describe to you my experiences and observations. I want to talk about us, all of us here in this room, and our attitudes about sex, sexuality, gender, and what the implications of those attitudes are. I am not an expert.

My observations: we are generally good people with good intentions and we think we are much more open minded and accepting than we actually are. I look around me and I see a dominantly heterosexual congregation with a significant female homosexual population and we are dominantly monogamous. We are not so comfortable with people who do not fit these parameters.

You are all probably aware of the Kinsey Scale of Human Sexuality. Based on many, many interviews, Kinsey proposed a continuum of behaviors and identity between heterosexual and homosexual. He divided that scale into 6 neat compartments, zero being exclusively heterosexual, six being exclusively homosexual, and three perfectly bisexual. Most of us are not zeros or sixes, we fall somewhere in between the end members. Also be aware that identity and behavior can be different in an individual. It occurred to me recently that people who believe that “sexual preference is a choice” must be individuals nearer to the center of the scale than the ends. For believing that sexual preference is a choice suggests that we are all fundamentally bisexual. I don’t think that is what the religious right means when they say that, but the logic follows doesn’t it?

I would propose two other scales to join the Kinsey Scale: a gender scale from male to female and a monogamy-polyamory scale. I am sure there are other dimensions as well. It is people on these other scales who must live even more in hiding. I have talked to people who felt shunned and ridiculed in this congregation for not choosing to present as expected for their gender or assumed sexual preference.

Look around you, what do you see? How many of us choose to present outside the gender norm? As a heterosexual woman, I know that it isn’t that difficult for me to wear clothing that gender bends. Lesbian friends tell me that receive more ridicule and verbal abuse for dressing or presenting themselves in a fashion that people classify as masculine than I do. I also observe that men who dress more feminine than average are often ridiculed. And I know that individuals who present themselves as neither male nor female make many people uncomfortable. Individuals who present as truly transgendered are choosing a dangerous path.

I will give an example of the issue from last Sunday’s Oregonian comic page. Baby Blues (date 1/4/05 strip). So, what does that say? I was left a bit aghast by the strip, shocked actually. You know, I wouldn’t choose a trans life for my child. It is too difficult, too dangerous, but I also would love and support them to the best of my ability. I know that fears around sexuality drive shaming, and the internalized shaming festers and may burst out later in life as sexual abuse.

Who are we? Who are you? Where do you fit on these sexual and gender continuums?
Have you been shamed for who you are? Who would you be if you could safely present yourself anyway you liked? What would you be comfortable with if you were not worried about the judgment of others?

I grew up in a world where I had no idea of these continuums. I had gay friends in high school, but I thought it was a two sided coin with no possibility of in between. I grew up in a world that shamed the sexually precocious and curious among us. We still live in a world that shames polyamory, we give it the name of ‘cheating’ or ‘affairs,’ assuming that anyone who has multiple sexual partners will keep that hidden. I would contend that very few of us are actually out there at a zero on the monogamy scale. When I married at the young age of 23, I guess I thought there was an off switch to my sexual attractions outside marriage. It didn’t work that way. I spent years trying to deny even the possibility of sexual attraction and finally learned that naming that attraction gave it less power than denying the attraction. Once I had named the sexual attractions I felt, I had the power to choose, with my partner, whether or not to act on it. There was no model for this in my life.

Sex is important powerful energy in the world. Sex draws us; it is a sacred life force. Probably for most of us, orgasm is our only truly ecstatic, out of body, sacred experience. We need each other, spiritually, sexually and physically. We need touch and play and arousal. We should hold up all that is our sexuality as a flame in a chalice, hold it safe, learn to keep sexuality safe by our talking about it rather than extinguishing the flame out of fear that it will get out of our control.

Chapter 2: Why does it matter?

When I was in middle school I went to a Methodist Youth Group for a few years. I went with my best friend, Nancy, mainly for the social network. It was a safe place that our parents allowed us to begin exploring our own autonomy and ‘romantic’ relationships. We must have met weekly at her church. There was a young couple who served as the lay leaders of the youth group. I don’t remember their names; I’ll just call him Bob for this talk. I remember going to parties at their home, a couple small kids running around. They must have been about 30. I was 12 or 13 and they seemed old to me, boring, middle aged, working, adults well on the other side of life.

I remember being alone at the church with Bob one evening. I don’t remember why, I must have volunteered for some task, cleaning up or setting up or something. Neither do I remember how it began but I do remember sitting next to Bob on a couch and he began kissing me and fondling me. I didn’t know what to do. I was taken aback by the sexual attractions of an adult who was supposed to be a leader and whose guidance I was supposed to be following. I was perhaps a bit grossed out but I also curious and intrigued. This was attention I hadn’t received before. I was confused. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know who to tell. I thought that I had done something bad. I was sure if I told an adult that I would get in trouble. So I didn’t tell anyone except my best friend. Shortly thereafter I lost interest in the youth group. I stopped attending church. I didn’t return to a church of my own accord again until I was 30 years old. I have wondered what other young women he molested. I wish I had known how to say or do something to stop him from continuing. I don’t know if he did, but that is my assumption.

Sexual offenders that betray the trust of their congregations or constituents seem to be quite common. I’ll name a few of the famous ones: John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bill Clinton, Trungpa Rinpoche, Daskalos, Jimmy Baker, Osel Tendzin, too many Priests to come close to naming, and there have been many UU preachers who have fallen into the same temptation. Charismatic leaders have sexual power, the very word charism, charisma, has a double meaning: the holy-spirit given gift of a magnetic personality that can draw people to the church or the gift of being sexual dynamic, magnetic, and attractive.

Perhaps all of these individuals were polyamorous. I, personally, think that this should be an acceptable relationship configuration although it is nearly impossible for it to be so in the current dynamics of our culture. Perhaps if we could find a way to safely nurture our sexual desire and energy, if we can name it and call it normal, then it isn’t so likely to fester and burst in the ugly ways it does.

Charismatic leaders call up incredible stores of sexual energy. I am not one of those leaders, but even I work up a sweat up here when I preach and I am not even trying to seduce you into converting or following a sacred or higher path. My goal is simply to get up here and speak my own truth. I can only imagine that when MLK finished preaching, when he finished seducing the crowds to his path and his vision, that he was highly sexually charged and that the energy needed to be grounded somewhere. From what I have read it was grounded in his numerous affairs when he traveled and with his wife when he was home. What would it mean to publicly acknowledge that need and to find acceptable ways to ground the sexual energy? I know that the current situation of denial and betrayal results in the destruction of churches and individuals. I know that sexual activity is normal and is not going to stop. There will be sex as sure as there will be death and taxes.

I do not mean to say that what these men did is right. And I apologize for naming only men. I am sure that there are women offenders as well, I just can’t think of any as I write this. What I believe is that denial of normal healthy sexuality, in a culture that simultaneously both glorifies and shames sexuality, has provided a context where our normal needs and desires become twisted and acted out in unhealthy, abusive, or even violent ways. Until we can accept and even celebrate the full range of human behaviors, sexual abuse and betrayal will be common.

There will be sex and there will be attraction. To be healthy individuals and healthy communities, we must find ways to come out from our denial, to name ourselves and to claim ourselves. I’ll tell you one more story. Last summer I went to Burning Man. Burning Man is an incredible experiment in artistic community that occurs each summer out in the middle of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. The playa (dry lake bed) environment on which Burning Man is held is inhospitable, daytime temperatures commonly are well over 100°F, dust storms, intense sun, winds in excess of 70mph, more dust storms, porta-potties, bring all your own water and vittles, pack out all your garbage. It is not for the feint of heart and it drew 40,000 people last year. It is the most amazing art festival I have ever experienced. It is also an incredible experiment in a gift economy, for once you enter nothing is for sale (except coffee and ice), everything is given or received as a gift.

And, Burning Man is an incredible experiment in tossing out all our assumptions about gender and sexuality. It is a week-long costume party and drag show where anyone and everyone can be as sexually-out as they like. I have never seen so many people in drag; I have never seen so many people free to be themselves sexually in public. I felt as if I could breathe freely for the first time in my life. Burning Man gave me hope. There was no judgment, only freedom. By my small survey, there was probably much less actual consummated sex than the press would have you believe. There is lots of talk about sex. There are lots of men in drag. There is the annual ‘critical tits’ parade of women having painted their chests in brilliant color and design then riding around the playa topless on bicycles. There is freedom and love and acceptance. I know it is a short idyllic moment and not the real world, and yet, I return and I wonder why we continue to choose these old patterns of being, these old rules of relationship and gender roles when the world could be so much more beautiful and interesting if we allowed a broader range of possibility.

I don’t really have a punch line or a moral to close with. There was however one more word in my title: fidelity. I think the fidelity that we need is to our true sexual selves and I use the word sexual in its broadest possible sense. I would ask you to begin to treat your sexual self with love and maybe find a way to live that self more openly. I would ask you to allow a bigger possibility of choices in who you are as a sexual being. I would ask you to really welcome the person who looks or behaves different than you do, maybe even ask them out for coffee, you might learn something interesting. I would ask you to look someone different than yourself in the eyes and to see yourself reflected there and to not be afraid of what you see.

Blessed Be. Amen.